


Compromised

by ATONAU



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Possibly Pre-Slash, Sad Spock, post Narada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:02:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ATONAU/pseuds/ATONAU
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His universe has been cleaved and bent and rendered unrecognizable, and it has been just over a day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compromised

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to NixDucky for reviewing this. Any remaining errors are my own.

The ship is limping.

Viewscreen cracked, hull breached in twenty-seven different locations, ranging from a gaping hole on Deck 6 to microfissures that are easily sealed with portable force field generators.

The warp core is missing, sacrificed so they could make their escape, like a lizard shedding its tail to flee a desert predator. In hindsight, firing at the _Narada_ had been a costly and unnecessary delay. The collision with the _Jellyfish_ was sufficient to ignite the red matter and trap their enemies in the impending black hole. Spock finds, however, that the memory of their phasors firing as the ship collapsed upon itself is too satisfying to regret. Illogical, considering that the decision nearly killed them all. But true nonetheless.

He is in obvious need of meditation.

Every system has been damaged in the conflict. Thirty seconds after the _Enterprise_ was propelled beyond the gravitational pull of the newly forming black hole by the detonation of the ejected warp core, klaxons blared and the ship shuddered and Kirk called a full stop to assess the dangers of continuing. He had not wanted to risk their lives by pushing the ship when she’d just saved them all. They are now traveling at one-tenth impulse power in a section of space between solar systems, partway along the trajectory back to Vulca— to the location Vulcan once inhabited. Spock had mere seconds to find a suitable location to lure the _Narada_ , ensuring that the red matter would be far from population centers in the event that it was detonated. Spock is gratified he found such a site, mere minutes from Earth via travel at Warp Factor 6.

A quick calculation, however, indicates that under their present capabilities of impulse power, Earth is more than four months away. The _Enterprise_ cannot maintain its current complement and the Vulcan refugees for even a week in its condition.

Repairing communications becomes the highest priority.

It takes three hours, during which Lt. Uhura and Chief Engineer Scott work together admirably, sometimes salvaging components from other systems to repair the long range communications array.

Star Fleet command is relieved to hear from them, shocked to finally understand what happened to the rest of the fleet that had been dispatched to Vulcan and fell silent, horrified to learn of Vulcan's demise and how close they came to suffering the same fate. The _Enterprise_ is given orders to wait for assistance. It will come not from Earth, where the maintenance of security patrols is deemed important to deter any panic in the population, despite the fact that the threat has been neutralized. They are to expect the _USS_ _Ride_ and _USS Sagan_ , which are already enroute from the Laurentian system.

Spock avoids his fellow Vulcans. Avoids Nyota. He focuses on efficient repair work, prioritizing the sensor array so they are not blind, confirming that the science station is monitoring the new black hole, documenting its stability, and will issue a warning if circumstances change. He works to ensure the remaining breaches are temporarily sealed or sectioned off before the _Enterprise_ begins her voyage in earnest.

The adrenaline they have all been riding since Kirk first flung himself on the bridge and demanded a full stop while mid-warp has finally abated. He is compromised. He feels he has as many holes in him as the ship, and does not begin to know how to seal those breaches. Any sympathy directed his way will no doubt crush him as effectively as the black hole collapsed the _Narada_. And his planet. He has no idea why he hasn’t been crushed already.

The crew is exhausted, but no one tries to go off duty. Only when Kirk sees an engineer injure himself and a console because sleep deprivation made his hand shake does the captain initiate a mandate of four hours of rest to all crew on a rotating basis. Spock ignores the command.

By the time Captain Ivanivna of the _USS Ride_ comes aboard, he and Captain Kirk have completed an abbreviated report on the status of the _Enterprise_ and copied the primary ship’s logs of the events since the _Enterprise_ responded to Vulcan’s distress signal a mere day ago. He sways on his feet, sure that his internal clock has been compromised as well. But no. His universe has been cleaved and bent and rendered unrecognizable, and it has been just over a day.

They meet Captain Ivanivna in the transporter room. She has seen the site of the battle of Vulcan, deceptively clean because most of the wreckage was swallowed by the black hole. She seems amazed to find the _Enterprise_ intact, but even more shocked to learn that the cadet brought up on academic dishonesty charges is apparently the savior of earth. Beside him, Kirk bristles. Not from accusations of cheating, but the idea that he deserves such credit. Kirk hands her the PADD, speaking of Mr. Scott's and Mr. Chekov's brilliance, Mr. Sulu’s piloting skills, Lt. Uhura’s unique ability to decode Romulan, and Spock. Spock’s crucial role in saving the Vulcan elders, disabling the _Narada’s_ drill, and luring the conflict away from Earth. Kirk speaks of him with a tone that connotes pride or awe. Spock does not understand. He corroborates the events that led to Kirk becoming captain, confirms the command decisions that Kirk made, and refers to him as captain throughout the meeting, in an attempt to make clear his support of the current chain of command. He knows the truth, despite Kirk’s glowing praise. Had he remained captain, Earth would now be lost, and the _Narada_ enroute to another Federation planet. He does not understand the tenor of Kirk’s voice or the curious look he gives Spock as he speaks.

What he does understand, as he walks an empty corridor after the meeting, is that he will disembark the _Enterprise_ — the ship that saved his life, saved his father’s life and the cultural heritage of his people, saved his mother’s planet, if not his mother herself — and board the _Ride_ beside the man who wrest control of the ship from him and defied logic and odds to secure an outcome almost unimaginable. He will go with his captain and a handful of senior crew, the medical staff caring for Pike, and most of the Vulcan survivors. They will travel to earth at Warp 3, taking minutes to cross the distance that the _Enterprise_ will require months to traverse. He pauses by a terminal. He feels ill equipped to debrief Star Fleet, but he and Kirk have been central to the events of the last day. No one else can explain them as thoroughly.

And yet, he finds he is loath to leave. It is illogical. The ship is limping. Torn nearly asunder. Compromised. Like him. And perhaps that is why.

He hesitates for only a moment before activating the terminal and retrieving the long-range sensor scans he had recorded as the _Enterprise_ had sped toward Earth. Toward Earth and away from the darkness. He watches as the black shrinks, not just from the growing distance. And then, abruptly, a gold-tinged light appears where there had been nothing.

Spock aches.

It is an illusion, of course. He has not witnessed the rebirth of his planet. The ship merely moved faster than light, and beyond the distance which the light from the planet’s destruction had traveled. But his mother was still alive when this light reflected from the planet’s surface. He makes calculations, just as he had when he first recorded it. This light is from when she ran for her life. This light is from when she meditated in the _katra_ ark. This light is from earlier in the day, when she would have tended her small garden. This light… he does not know what she had done the day before. He did not communicate as faithfully as he promised, busy with obligations at the academy. He does not know what this light meant in the life of his mother.

The recording ends and loops to the beginning again, just as Spock becomes aware of a presence beside him. He sees a gold shirt in his peripheral vision, and blue eyes reflected in the glass of the terminal, struggling for context and understanding. It does not take long. As the gold dot reappears, Kirk gasps softly. His captain knows. _Sees_. Spock should perhaps feel shame at being caught wallowing in such sentimentality, but instead he feels relief to be standing shoulder to shoulder with Kirk in the face of such pain.

“When did you record this?” he asks in a hushed tone, hesitantly, as if he is asking something personal Spock might not wish to divulge.

“Before I confirmed Ensign Chekov’s telemetry and offered to board the Romulan vessel.” After his father admitted to loving his mother. After he admitted the desire for vengeance. Illogical.

They stand in silence as the video loops again. Spock feels Kirk’s hand on his shoulder. Not demanding, not nearly as intrusive as it should feel. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her.” Jim’s voice is wistful, and Spock looks up sharply, surprised that Kirk has understood the real significance of the recording.

“Captain, I do not hold you respons—”

“Jim,” Kirk corrects quietly. “In moments like this, it should be Jim.”

Spock used “Jim” only once, aboard the _Jellyfish_ when he attempted to give the man his last words to Lt. Uhura. It had come out his mouth naturally then. Spock had not even realized he’d said it until he’d reviewed the scene in his mind later.

“Jim,” Spock amends. It still feels more natural than he would have expected. Curious. “You are not responsible for my mother’s death, and you led the mission to destroy those who were. I would not have been successful without you.”

“Same here. We’re a hell of a team. And maybe it’s not my fault, but I still wish we’d saved her, too. Maybe if Sulu and I’d disabled the drill a little more quickly. Or—”

“I should have kept her behind me on the ledge. She would not have fallen when the shear stress of the rock was surpassed. She would not…” Her face — eyes wide and fearful and locked on his — rises in his memory. She had been mid-beam. Aware she was falling and terrified. His only hope is that her state had prevented pain from crushing rocks. That her consciousness had been scattered among atoms before being compressed in the darkness, and not smeared against unforgiving sandstone. He feels Kirk’s hand tighten on his shoulder.

Regret is illogical. _Kaiidth_. He has lost less than others, less than he might have lost. Still more than he can bear, perhaps. He had not planned to survive the confrontation with the _Narada_. Had been surprised to find himself once again on the transporter pad of the _Enterprise_. Less surprised, however, when he looked over to see that Kirk was also there, Pike in his arms. Against all odds, they succeeded in rescuing their commanding officer, defeating the destroyers of Vulcan, and preventing the Earth from following Vulcan’s fate. And though it does not feel like a victory as he watches the video loop again, it is more of one than he’d allowed himself to consider.

“Give me your PADD,” Kirk says.

“Captain?”

“Jim,” he corrects again, holding out his hand.

Spock offers his personal PADD without further question, and watches as Kirk copies the file over and then encrypts it with an algorithm he’s never seen before.

“I’m making the password Alpha Shift for now, but you should change it. They’re going to go through the records of the Enterprise with a fine tooth comb,” he says, handing Spock his PADD and then copying the file onto his own PADD as well. He deletes the file from the terminal, and then from the backup on the main computer, and then transfers a program from his own PADD and runs it. It seems to target the section that the file had been stored in, scrambling just enough address bits that the sector becomes unreadable. It will look like a hardware malfunction. The program destroys itself in the same way. To anyone investigating later, it will look like damage from the battle. Or a simple read error. The sort of computer malfunction that occurs frequently enough to be unsuspicious.

Spock realizes that this must be the same program Kirk used to cover his tracks in the _Kobayashi Maru_ program alterations. Spock had been thwarted for _days_ by this small algorithm. He could use this knowledge against Kirk in the trial, but he feels no vindication. The lesson Kirk was meant to learn was not as important as the lesson Spock has since learned from Kirk.

Kirk continues to check the data — or lack of data — until he is satisfied. Then he says, “Now you have it, and I have it. We’ll remember. But they won’t be able to use it against you if they decide to look into our mental states. They’re going to know you were emotionally compromised because I became captain, but they don’t need to see… they don’t need to know anything personal, Spock. They don’t get to have everything. Share it with them if you want to, but if you don’t... well, they don’t know about it.”

Spock never expected to feel grateful and relieved due to an act of sabotage. But he is abruptly aware that if anyone else had come across him and learned of this recording, he would have been mortified. He does not want anyone else to know the depth of his longing. He does not want to be this exposed to anyone else. He does not want his compromise and illogic known.

“I will drop the charges relating to the _Kobayashi Maru_ ,” Spock says.

Kirk looks up and shakes his head. “That’s not why I did it. Any of it.”

“I am aware of that, Capt— Jim. I understand your motivations.”

They look at each other for a long moment. “Well that trial is probably the least of ‘Fleet’s worries right now. You do what you need to do, Spock.”

“Jim. _Captain_ ,” Spock emphasizes. “They will be dropped.”

Jim nods, a small smile pulling at his lips. He looks at the ground for a moment, and when his eyes meet Spock’s again, something in them has changed. “You ready to face the Admirals?”

Spock cocks his head. Is he? There is little choice in the matter. He is still loath to leave the ship, but he does finally feel able stand beside Kirk and answer questions with the thoroughness they deserve. He gives a small nod.

Spock takes a last look at the console, checking ships’ readouts before returning it to the home screen and shutting off the display. It is illogical to feel gratitude to an inanimate object — a ship — but he cannot censor himself. As if following his train of thought, Kirk places a possessive hand on the wall and asks, “Do you think they’ll patch her up? She took a beating.”

Spock considers. “I have no doubt. With the losses of the Battle of Vulcan, any ship that is at all space-worthy will be repaired and returned to service as quickly as possible. Plus, humans are a sentimental species. They will likely put a priority on reinstating the ship that saved the planet.”

Kirk lets out a small laugh, looking down again. “Humans. Yes, we certainly are,” he says, looking up at Spock again with something like fondness in his eyes. His expression grows wistful again as he looks around. “I hope we see her again.”

Spock can no more predict the future now than he could a day ago, but he feels an irrational confidence — the sort he used to chide his mother for — as he says, “I have no doubt that you will, Jim.”

Kirk takes that in, nodding slowly, and then tilting his head in the direction of the transporter room. They turn together to leave the ship.


End file.
